Another article re Nefertiti and repatriation

Germany and Egypt have long been at odds over the return of the famous bust of Nefertiti. Now documents found in archives show that the conflict was started by a Frenchman who had fought the Germans in World War I and considered them to be swindlers. He may have been right.

This queen owes her immortality to a gifted artist. The bust he fashioned out of gypsum and limestone some 3,350 years ago became an eternal monument to her beauty. As realistic as the image is, it has the radiance of a goddess. "It's no use describing it; you have to see it!" said the German archeologist who unearthed the bust of the Egyptian queen in the desert sand almost a century ago.

Hardly anyone is familiar with the name of the sculptor, Thutmose, but the bust is of the famous Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile, Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. And thanks to a coincidence, a minor detour of history, her likeness is not on display in a museum in her native Egypt, but in Berlin. Or was it not a coincidence at all, but rather fraud?

For the Germans, Nefertiti is their perceived property, a national cultural treasure, their entry in the canon of the sublime. The bust represents many things, but most of all it stands for both the splendid epoch of ancient Egypt and the age of spectacular digs around the beginning of the last century, when Europe's archeologists set out for the Nile. Today, she is the star of the Neues Museum in Berlin's Mitte district, which was reopened in 2009. There, the bust is prominently displayed in the middle of a domed hall, bathed in soft light and admired by thousands every day. Of the more than 1 million visitors the museum attracts each year, most come to see the bust of Nefertiti, as if they were making a pilgrimage to admire this queen of the Nile. Nefertiti is Berlin's Mona Lisa, except that she is perhaps even more beautiful, more mysterious and more magnificent.

Of course, the Egyptians would prefer to have this heirloom of their magnificent history in their own country.